


Five Times Mrs Robinson Comes To Stay (And One Time She Says Goodbye)

by whopooh



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Gen, MFMM Year of Tropes, Rumours, embarrassment and fluff, mothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 12:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12059106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whopooh/pseuds/whopooh
Summary: Esme Robinson knows it’s perhaps not completely fair to barge in on her son without notice. But she wants to see him at least a few times a year, and she loves to catch him off guard.For the September trope challenge "Don't believe the rumours".





	Five Times Mrs Robinson Comes To Stay (And One Time She Says Goodbye)

“Jack darling!”

It’s a Saturday afternoon, and as Jack opens the door he is met with the surprising sight of two bright, sparkling eyes surrounded by the most endearing laugh lines he knows. From under a rather fashionable hat, that he hasn’t seen before, a woman scrutinizes him knowingly.

“Mother!” is all he manages to blurt out.

He keeps standing there, just looking at her and not giving any signs of moving, so she puts her bag down and asks:

“Is this a bad time? Are you in the middle of something?”

Her words seem to make him come alive, almost as if she has pushed a button. He could be like that, she thinks as she watches him, her youngest: like a machine. Steadfast, slow, meticulous – and then he’d break the impression by suddenly being very fast, very human. 

“Of course not. Please, come in,” Jack says as he opens the door wider, kissing her on both cheeks as she enters his house. He knows she doesn’t care about his habits, but he still wishes she had notified him so he could have cleaned up the worst. He thinks about the dishes piled in his kitchen and the laundry waiting to be washed, and how he’d looked forward to spending his day off doing none of it.

Of course, this isn’t going to happen.

He takes his mother’s coat and hat and hangs them carefully on the armoire in the hall.

“Tea?” he asks and she nods. “In the living room,” he suggests and she guesses he doesn’t really want her in the kitchen.

Mrs Robinson, Esme, takes her place in his favourite chair and watches her son put bread, biscuits, milk, honey, and tea cups on the small adjoining table. He even produces a decent cloth for the table, and completes the set with a large, brown tea kettle in the middle. All the while she is watching him. He looks drawn, she ponders, like he doesn’t really eat enough, and like he doesn’t have a good place to rest his head. She looks around the room, thinking about the difference from when Rosie was still there and made it a real home. Taken care of, kept, lived in. Though still not particularly happy. 

“She really is a headstrong woman. Unyielding, even,” his mother says, boring that _look_ into him that tells him she can see right through him, like she always has. 

He is taken aback. How can she possibly know? What kind of fast rumours have picked up on his partnership with a lady detective and passed it all the way to Wollongong, where his parents moved a few years earlier? There isn’t even much to make rumours about – that kiss was only a distraction, and surely the nightcaps they have made a habit of can’t be common knowledge? He rattles his brain for who the gossip could be. Had there been any mentions in the press?

“I… yes, I suppose she is,” he answers, slightly resigned.

“They always were your type, weren’t they? Those strong-willed, clever girls you liked to surround yourself with, even as an adolescent.”

Jack takes a too large gulp of the tea to stop himself from talking, an action only resulting in him almost choking on the tea. Esme watches the guilt-stricken son she knows rather too well, and sighs heavily.

“You cannot tell me she is coming back. Again? After all you’ve done to each other?”

“Coming back?” As he says it, Jack realises his mother is talking about Rosie, no one else. Definitely not a lady detective that seems to have taken up residence in his mind. 

“I don’t think that’s wise, Jack. You are far too accommodating.”

Jack thinks about the paperwork he has in his study, the papers that are the last piece before they can go to court. The paperwork he hasn’t put his name on yet. It’s been laying there for more than a week. He hasn’t managed to sign it, to accept that this is finally happening.

“She’s not. I promise. I have the paperwork to prove it,” he says and scrambles to the study, quickly signing the papers and bringing them to her. “See.”

His mother’s eyes tell him she can see the signature is still wet. It feels, absurdly, like all those times he’d forged notes from the teacher as a boy; he suspects he didn’t fool her then, and he’s certainly not fooling her now, but she doesn’t speak. He doesn’t speak.

When they’ve finished their tea, Jack brings the papers back to his desk and puts them in an envelope. Then he goes to prepare the guestroom for his mother’s visit, thankful there are clean sheets despite his growing laundry pile.

 

***

 

Esme Robinson knows it’s perhaps not completely fair to barge in on her son without notice. But she wants to see him at least a few times a year, and she loves to catch him off guard, to see her Jack and not the composed Inspector, so she’s made a habit of it. It felt like a good intervention when he was a separated man and needed the company; now that he’s been divorced and living on his own for some time, even more so. 

This time, as she’s spending her customary week in Melbourne, she notices odd occurrences. Jack comes home early and claims he drove home, although she knows his car has been home the whole day. He looks like he wants to tell her stories, just like when he was a child, but then he catches himself. Once he tells her a story featuring a butler, and when she asks who he knows that has a butler he turns quiet. She knows he likes to keep his cards close to his chest, but she is certain something is going on.

Esme is in the kitchen preparing dinner when she hears a knock on the front door. There is the sound of Jack’s steps in the hall, and then she hears him talk to someone, quietly and slightly agitated:

“No,” she hears. “This is not a good time. How do you even know where I live, Miss Fisher?” Jack steps outside and closes the door behind him so she cannot make out the rest of the conversation.

When he comes back in she’s still in the kitchen, intently shelling peas. Jack turns up in the door.

“Who was that?” 

“Who? Oh.” He looks caught out. “Just a neighbour.”

“Did she need help?”

“She had come to the wrong house.”

“That’s odd for a neighbour.” Esme’s eyes are keenly observant, and she sees him turn slightly pink as he retreats to his study.

Later, at dinner, she questions him more.

“How’s work nowadays? Are you happy with your newest constable?”

“He’s growing to become quite the policeman.” Jack looks proud for a moment, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and thinks for a while. “The crime is grim, but we have a fairly good solve rate.”

He has a wistful look as he tells her about the progress of his very young and slightly bumbling constable, Collins, who’s found himself a sweetheart who might be cleverer than him.

“And you? Do you have any woman friends?” she asks, struggling to sound casual.

“Mother!” He looks slightly scandalized, but she is not repentant.

“That’s not such an odd question, darling. You’re a single man in your best years. And a man that seems to have neighbours mistakenly coming over?”

He sighs, fidgeting with his cutlery. 

“Fine. She’s not a neighbour. She’s someone I work with, occasionally.”

“I thought there were no police women in Melbourne?”

“She’s not a police woman. She’s a lady detective.”

“A lady detective.” She smiles, intrigued. “A detecting lady. You know, I quite like the sound of that.”

As Jack digs into his second helping, he cannot help but smile a lopsided grin against his better judgement, just like he seems to do so many things against his better judgement these days. 

His mother smiles back, a small smirk he knows from experience means that she’s considering, weighing, concluding. In that moment, he swears to himself he’ll never allow his mother and Phryne Fisher to cross paths. Who knows what would be left of Melbourne if they did.

 

***

 

“The Inspector is not coming over, Miss?” Mr Butler asks, suppressing a tone of surprise. He knows the detectives have concluded a case that same morning, an exceptionally tricky one at that, and he knows they’ve made a habit of celebrating their finished cases with a nightcap together. 

“Not today, Mr Butler,” Phryne says, her voice almost convincingly neutral. She looks over Dot’s shoulder to peek at the delicious cake in the oven. “A pity for him, he’s definitely missing out.”

“I bet he’s busy with his visitor.” 

The words come out of Dot’s mouth before she has a chance to stop them. She bites her lip as she studiously dries her hands on the apron, not daring to look up. She was not supposed to say that. She has promised Hugh she will not pass on his suspicions about the Inspector as it’s not their place, and they have no idea about anything, really. They’ve just been speculating because they’re endlessly fascinated by their two bosses, and it’s one of their favourite topics on their walks on the beach. Oh, now she’s done it!

Mr Butler and Phryne turn to her in complete sync, their faces showing the exact same type of restrained surprise. If she wasn’t so embarrassed, she might have giggled at the sight of them.

“Jack has a visitor?” Phryne finally says, and Dot is astonished by what the slight rise in pitch seems to tell her. But it seems Dot’s tongue still hasn’t learned the lesson of quietly minding its own business, because she answers:

“She’s making him lunches some days. Or that’s what Hugh tells me.” 

Phryne forms her mouth into a little “o,” but nothing comes out. 

Taking food to City South is something she herself does irregularly, always with her aim at Jack. She knows exactly what that means, and it unsettles her. A man is always more amenable when on a full stomach, and that is particularly true of Jack Robinson. Now someone else is giving him food.

Phryne knows full well she has no right to assume anything of the man, that they have made no promises or commitments, even in the understanding of the friendship. She knows all this. But he has never failed to come to her for a nightcap after a case, and she just cannot picture him entertaining a woman in his house. His house that… his house that she’s actually never been to, and the one time she tried, he turned her away. Far too abruptly, she realises now.

“I’m sorry Miss, I really don’t know anything more.” 

“Of course not, Dot. This is not a problem,” Phryne says, and it’s true, why would it be a problem? Jack is free to do what he pleases with his time. It isn’t Jack’s fault that she has taken for granted he’d come over, or that she hasn’t made any other plans for the evening. It isn’t his fault that she’s started to assume things. He never presumes about her. Why has she started to do that about him?

Because he is such a steadfast part of her world, and because he always seems to have time for her. And, if she’s completely honest, because there is no one she rather wants to have a nightcap with, bar Mac, who is her favourite person in the whole world. This realisation lands heavily in her stomach. When did he quietly slot into place as her partner, in so many ways? She thinks about his eyes when he told her he dismissed the charges, her self-afflicted guilt about losing Janey, and when she put his new hat on him and his gaze was so intense she thought she might combust. She thinks about how she wants those eyes, and everything behind them, in a way she hasn’t completely dared to think about.

 _It’s always the quiet ones,_ she thinks and knows it must be one of the wisdoms she’s been subjected to by Aunt Prudence. She wonders idly if it’s true, or if it’s just the perspective of an indulgent gossiper. She does find his reticence alluring. She loves to think of him as a nut to crack. A clam to poke at. A gentleman to fluster.

Phryne decides she needs to take action. Tomorrow she’s going to City South to find out more. It’s better to know than to guess and fret. Not that Phryne Fisher frets over men – this is obviously an occupation that is far beneath her – but the sentiment still stands.

 

*** 

 

After lunch the next day, Phryne Fisher walks into City South. Nodding at Hugh, she asks if Jack is in, receiving a tiny nod in reply. 

She pauses in the doorway to look at him, watching him realise he’s not alone, and raising his gaze to the door. She sees the emotions flicker over his face as he takes in that she’s there. Surprise, a tiny flicker of happiness, instantly quelled by resignation. Or is that adoration? She’s always had problems discerning between those two feelings when it comes to him. 

Jack puts down his pen and leans back in his chair as she’s coming towards him.

“Miss Fisher. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he says and smiles one of his cheekier smiles, while she sits down on the corner of his desk. She assesses him, trying to see if she’s somehow lost him. She takes the chance to wind up the case they never got to have a nightcap over, and he behaves as usual – sending back the repartee with his usual aplomb, as if they were playing a game of tennis. 

“Jack,” she finally says. “I’ve heard rumours. That you… bring lunch with you to work.” 

He looks non-plussed. “That’s correct.” 

“You never do that. You’re one of the pie cart’s best customers.”

It dawns on Jack that she’s having her investigative mind on, and has found a suspiciously changed pattern in his life. He can see her curiosity, almost brimming over the edges, and he has to admit it’s incredible endearing. She’s like a cat: if a door is closed, she’ll do anything to open it to see what’s on the other side; if there’s an exciting wall, she’ll climb it. He has a sudden urge to hold out his hand and stroke her hair, perhaps even call her as he would a cat, but he doubts she would appreciate the simile. He most definitely does not hold out his hand to touch her, instead he retreats a bit more into his chair.

“You cannot possibly know that,” he says. He’s defensive, but her eyes scrutinize him so hard, he cannot keep up his solemnity for long. “Well, I guess there might be some truth to that.”

She nods at the emptied lunch box standing behind him, looking at him meaningfully with enlarged eyes – that way she has when she wants to convey something without speaking. Her mouth is small, closed and set. He doesn’t catch her meaning, though – it seems they work better together on crime scenes than with one of them as the object of detection. 

“That lunch box is made by a loving hand, Jack. There’s no way you have made it yourself, not with a little napkin like that and the extra box for dessert.”

He rolls his eyes, somehow feeling caught out. 

“Alright, someone did make me that lunch box,” he confesses.

She leans a little closer to him. “A new woman in your life, Jack?

He looks at her, stunned at her bluntness, and stunned at the fact that her mind went there. He searches her face for clues before narrowing his eyes and leaning a little bit forward in his chair.

“And why would you want to know that?”

His gaze is simultaneously intense and humorous, and he’s far too close for comfort. She can feel the tension building between them, drawing them together, fuelled by her blunt question and of everything the question is implying.

Phryne imagines not answering that question but instead leaning into him further and simply pressing her lips to his, laying her hands around him so her fingertips can tickle the nape of his neck. She imagines his surprised intake of breath and him melting into her kiss, opening his mouth to welcome her in. This is not a new fantasy of hers, she knows exactly how it usually unfurls in her head, and she breaks their eye-contact and gives herself a little shake to come out of it. She has no idea how much that ties into his image of her as a cat on his desk, and his urge to touch her.

“No reason,” she says in her high-pitched voice, knowing she has overstepped, but not feeling particularly apologetic about it.

Jack tilts his head.

“It’s my mother,” he finally admits, seeing no reason to keep up the enigma. “She’s staying with me this week.” He assesses her in return. “Did you really come here to investigate my lunch box?”

Phryne rolls her eyes.

“I came to talk through the case, since you seem to have forgotten you were supposed to come for a nightcap yesterday, Jack.” 

He raises an eyebrow at that implication, of him being _supposed_ to come over to her. 

“But I admit the box was an irresistible puzzle.”

 

***

 

There has been the failure of a first date, ruined by Phryne’s father and ending with Jack waking up in her bed, but in all the wrong way. There has been the promise of something more as Jack came over late one night with a bottle of wine in his hands. How he did not end up in her boudoir that night, she’ll never understand. She doesn’t think she’s ever had a more heated conversation without anything happening. That man and his restraint.

Two days and one nightly dream about Jack later, Phryne decides she’s simply done waiting. Jack has been anything but enigmatic about his feelings towards her lately, and he must have understood her reciprocation, mustn’t he? She’ll just have to take it into her own hands and do it properly.

In the evening, she dresses in a scandalously flimsy dress and laughs at the thought of how Jack will react to it. It is short, green, and far too suggestive and see through to be deemed proper, and she’s only used it in very liberal nightclubs before. Her coat and hat makes her a paragon of propriety on the outside, and she smiles – she loves inhabiting her own contrasts and angles. She’s sure Jack will appreciate it eventually, even if it might take him by surprise first. Perhaps that is what she needs: to surprise him and reach through his armour when he’s off guard.

“I might not make it home tonight, Mr B,” she says with a smile as she comes down to the hall. “If everything works out right, I won’t.”

“Very well, Miss,” he says. She has already told him where she’s going. Her staff needs to know where to find her in an emergency.

As Phryne parks on the street she sees the lights are on in Jack’s place. So he’s home, and she won’t have to resort to her lockpicks. She wonders if he might just be about to make some dinner. She still hasn’t been inside his house, and she’s caught by a slight trepidation before she resolutely walks up his front path and knocks at his door.

There are footsteps, and after a few moments the door is opened. It reveals an older woman in a neat, almost fashionable blue dress, looking at Phryne with surprised eyes.

“Good evening,” the woman says. “What can I do for you?”

“I…” Phryne finds herself speechless. 

Is this a house keeper – does Jack have a house keeper? Can it be the mother he has mentioned before? She can see some possible resemblances, but she isn’t certain. Does she want to meet Jack’s mother, and now, when everything between them is so uncertain and new? 

She decides to try to extricate herself quickly.

“I am looking for Inspector Robinson,” she says. “But if he’s not at home I can come back la...”

“Oh, no need for that, he’ll be home any minute,” the lady says and opens the door wider to usher Phryne in, leaving her no choice but to comply. “Please, come in, Mrs...”

“Miss Fisher,” Phryne says as she steps inside the door, and she misses the look of realisation on the older woman’s face as she passes. 

“But please, call me Phryne,” she says with a small, warm smile as she turns and holds out her hand. 

“Esme Robinson,” the woman answers, and Phryne now certainly sees her son in the expression over her eyes. “May I take your coat?”

And this is the exact moment when Phryne remembers the state of her dress under the coat. The exact cut of the dress, the exact way it makes it look like you can see right through it in the right light. 

She shudders slightly. She is not a woman who apologizes for herself, not under any circumstances, so instead she schools her features and casually opens the coat, as if nothing whatsoever is the matter, and hands it to Esme with an unwaveringly polite smile. If Mrs Robinson is surprised by the look of her, she doesn’t show it. She hangs up the coat and accepts the accompanying hat without so much as a flinch. Phryne supposes she should have expected nothing less from the woman who raised Jack Robinson.

“Please, let us wait in here,” she says as she directs Phryne to the living room. 

Watching the elegant lady sit down, lean as a cat and without any half-conscious attempts to cover herself up despite her scandalous dress, Esme is rather impressed. She cannot imagine there were room in Miss Fisher’s plans to be met by her Inspector’s mother, of all people. So _this_ is the detective her son seems to spend rather a lot of time with. She is beautiful, of course, and Esme is seeing rather more of her than she would have preferred, but that’s not what strikes her. It’s the attentiveness of her eyes, how she seems to be so fully there in the present. 

It’s also the way she scans the room, clearly telling Esme the degree of her curiosity about her son, and also that Phryne Fisher has never set her foot here before.

Esme offers to make some tea, and when she comes back with the hot brew she finds Phryne politely searching Jack’s bookshelves. She’s also attempting to subdue a shiver, and Esme realises that dress in no way can withstand the rather cool winter air in Jack’s house. 

“Here’s the tea, Miss Fisher. Let me just see if I can find something more for you to wear,” she says. There is a smile building up in the corners of her mouth, and Phryne throws her a grateful look.

So it is that when Jack Robinson opens the door to his home, rather tired from a long day, he hears voices, laughter and the tinkling of tea cups from his living room. Entering the room, he is struck by the most unexpected sight: his mother laughing at something Miss Fisher has obviously just said – a Miss Fisher that not only seems to be practically naked from her thighs down, but who is also wearing one of his own white, woollen sweaters. 

The sight of her in his clothes makes his heart clench surprisingly hard.

“Hello Jack,” Phryne says and smiles at him as if this isn’t the most absurd thing, but rather completely normal for a Thursday evening. 

Just as Jack’s blush has turned into crimson, his mother turns towards him. “Jack! Do you want some tea?” She can't completely hide her smile at his crestfallen look.

Jack’s body seems to remember only one thing, how to nod in response to a question about tea, and his eyes don’t leave Phryne for a moment as his mother bustles out to put the kettle on again.

“Miss Fisher,” he says when they’re alone. “This is unexpected.” 

He looks at her, registering a dress that is so scanty it’s almost invisible and the fact that she obviously found it suitable for a visit to him, and his sweater on top of it. He finishes with a questioning gaze in her eyes as he tilts his head. “It certainly looks better on you.”

Phryne laughs at that – a full, free laugh that seems to go against everything awkward about the situation they’re in.

“It was rather cold here, and your mother offered,” she says. “I admit I had planned to surprise you, Jack, but perhaps not in exactly this way.” 

She fires off one of her cheekiest smiles at his raised eyebrow, and she rises from the chair to come closer to him, caressing his tie with one of her hands. “I had decided there were some things we… failed to address the other evening.” 

Her voice is enticing, and she gazes at him from under her lashes. Jack blushes again, reaching out to put his hand over hers, where it rests against his chest.

“Yes?” he says, and it’s so clearly a question her breath hitches. 

His eyes search hers - wondering, probing, asking her for permission - before he visibly crumbles. He leans in and places the softest of kisses on her lips while letting one hand catch the back of her neck and the other move down to her lower back, just where the sweater gives way to her far too short dress. Phryne does not allow the kiss to stay gentle as she reaches out to finally caress the back of his neck.

At that moment, Esme enters the room, just to quickly turn around when she realises what is happening in front of her eyes. She retreats to the kitchen and stands there for a little while, counting to thirty, then making sufficient noises as she again walks to the living room. When she enters this time, Phryne and Jack sit in one chair each, having a semblance of a conversation. Nothing but the smile on the woman’s face gives away what has just happened between them. 

“Here you go, son,” she says as she pours him some tea. 

Phryne is already back at Wardlow by nine that evening. As Mr Butler receives her coat to bring it to the wardrobe, he gives no sign of noticing her unusual combination of clothes, or the quality of the smile on her lips. 

 

***

 

Esme Robinson is standing in the port of Melbourne, watching her son arrange for his luggage to be taken onto the ship. It has all been so hasty, she’s still surprised by the turn of events. Jack telephoned her a few days earlier, to tell her he was going to England. He must follow Phryne Fisher, and quite literally it seems. Phryne has flown away – _flown away! Just like Peter Pan,_ was her first thought – and she’s asked him to come after her. 

Esme cannot fault him for going. When it comes to sacrifices for love, this seems to be on the pleasant side of things, and she can see him now, her youngest: so alive, so in the moment, bristling with anticipation, as he’s striding back towards her to say his final farewell.

“Take care, mother,” he says to her as he leans down to give her a big hug. “Please say goodbye to father and the rest from me too.”

“Of course,” she says, taking one small step back so she can assess him properly, adjusting his lapels as if they would ever need that. “They all send their love. And I’ll keep an eye on your house.” 

She is getting teary, and she puts her hand on his cheek. “I know you don’t know when you’ll be back, Jack. But please tell me you are coming back.”

He looks her in the eyes.

“I promise. I hope I won’t come alone, but either way I’ll come back.”

She smiles at him, realising he’s doing this travel without being certain about anything, feeling pride and anxiety swell in her chest for his bravery. “I don’t want to think about Melbourne without you.”

It’s time for him to board. He takes his last small luggage and bends down to kiss her on the cheek.

“I’ll see you soon, mother.” 

She stands still, watching his back as he walks away. She doesn’t move until he’s made it to the ship and disappeared from sight. 

 

***

 

When Jack comes home eight months later, just as he promised and not alone, Esme Robinson is standing at the port. She’s been staying in his house for a couple of days, making it fit to live in again. She’s also finally met that butler he’d been talking about – the most delightful man she has ever met, she’s quite sure. Mr Butler and Mrs Robinson have compared notes about what to cook to welcome the travellers home, and he and young Dot chose to stay at Wardlow to make the last preparations while the two gruff gentlemen of Miss Fisher’s acquaintance drove Esme to the port. 

She’s standing almost in the same spot as she did when Jack went away, waving, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Next to her, the kind Mr Yates is doing the same, while Mr Johnson is standing to the side, still like a pillar, trying to hide the smile that threatens to break out on his face. 

Miss Fisher is waving like mad, one hand on her cloche and her yellow scarf happily billowing in the wind as she and Jack approach through the crowd. Jack at her side is loaded with luggage and can do nothing more than smile. They’re a beautiful couple, Esme thinks. The sea voyage doesn’t seem to have tired them one bit.

“It’s wonderful to be home,” Miss Fisher says as they come to a stop and Jack finally can put down the bags. “Bert, Cec!” She hugs both of them and asks how they are. Then she turns to Esme.

“And Mrs Robinson, how lovely to see you.” Phryne takes her hand and kisses her on the cheek. “It’s such a relief to meet you with my clothes on!”

Curiously, her statement is making three men simultaneously blush, but neither of the women. 

Jack is the one to break the silence, suggesting they pack everything into the taxi and drive to Wardlow, as he’s absolutely starving.

**Author's Note:**

> Fire_Sign ususally betas my fics before I post them, giving me the forewarning if they're intelligble. In this case she also persistently prodded me when I said I couldn't write it. There's really nothing to do but to blame it all on her.


End file.
